Coming to the Library this fall? Please donate to our Fall Food Drive! Help feed our community and visit our “Virginia’s Forgotten Canneries” exhibition while you’re here. Donate a food item and we’ll waive any fines or fees you owe the Library! Donation boxes can be found near the Circulation Desk and at the entrance of events. According to Central Virginia’s FeedMore organization, most-needed items include peanut butter, canned tuna and chicken, and low-sodium vegetables.

Created by the Blue Ridge Institute of Ferrum College, Virginia’s Forgotten Canneries documents the home canning industry developed by local farmers that supplied vegetables and fruits to the commonwealth’s increasingly urban population for more than 50 years. These rural canneries were small operations that also provided cash wages for rural residents. Counties along Virginia’s central Blue Ridge Mountains were particularly rich in canneries, such as Botetourt County, which was home to 193 of them in 1915. The exhibition features colorful and eye-catching labels–on graphic panels as well as on a pyramid of actual cans–many of which were created by the Piedmont Label Company (now Smyth Companies), of Bedford, which donated approximately 10,000 of its pre-1960 labels to the Blue Ridge Institute in 2014.